Couple recalls fall of Berlin Wall

Sarah Barclay was born in West Berlin at a monumental time in Germany’s history. Both of her parents worked with the U.S. Air Force and lived in military housing about 200 feet from the graffiti-covered concrete barrier built by the communist Eastern Bloc.

When John and Tammy Raifsnider celebrated their daughter’s birthday Thursday, it was especially meaningful. Sarah’s 25th birthday heralds the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago Sunday.

Reportedly erected to “protect” East Berliners from fascist influences, the wall, more realistically, prevented them from defecting to West Berlin.

John Raifsnider, of Escondido, recalled that a year earlier a British pilot had asked him, “Do you think the wall will ever come down.””

He had replied, “Not in my lifetime.”

The sudden news of the wall’s fall sent West Berliners into the streets yelling, singing and celebrating the reunification of their city. Many took sledgehammers and pickaxes and began hacking away at the brutal barrier.

Raifsnider said that a small section near his home was demolished that night and the next day a paved road had appeared in its place.

He took his son, then age 5, on a double-decker bus into downtown Berlin where people from East Germany were streaming through the formerly barred crossing.

“Look carefully,” he told his son, “because this is freedom.”

When Raifsnider returned to the United States a month later, he carried 80 pounds of the historic wall in his duffle bag to pass out to friends as souvenirs. He still has many of the pieces, along with photos and a T-shirt of East Berliners flooding through the wall that says, in German, “Last one out, turn out the lights.”

Tourists and dignitaries from around the world headed to Germany to mark the anniversary, will be greeted by a nine-mile string of lamps erected where the wall once stood. Balloons topping 8,000 lampposts will be released on Sunday carrying the public’s messages with memories of the wall.